22 Quotes to Celebrate Milton Friedman Day

Conservative economist Milton Friedman would have been 103 years old if he were still living today. He won a Nobel Prize for his work in economics and served as an advisor to President Nixon. (Photo: Everett Collection/Newscom)

July 31 is known as a day to honor conservative economist Milton Friedman, as he would have been 103 years old if he were still living today.

Friedman was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work in economics, specifically for “his achievements in the field of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy.”

He served as an advisor to President Nixon in the White House and was the president of the American Economic Association before becoming a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Friedman was known for his defense of the free market and call for school choice through a voucher programs.

To honor this great man, here are 22 of his most notable quotes regarding the economy, government, and life.

“If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.”

“The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way.”

“I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstance and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it’s possible.”

“A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.”

“If all we want are jobs, we can create any number—for example, have people dig holes and then fill them up again, or perform other useless tasks. Work is sometimes its own reward. Mostly, however, it is the price we pay to get the things we want. Our real objective is not just jobs but productive jobs—jobs that will mean more goods and services to consume.”

“The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.”

“When everybody owns something, nobody owns it, and nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its condition. That is why buildings in the Soviet Union—like public housing in the United States—look decrepit within a year or two of their construction.”

“The lack of balance in governmental activity reflects primarily the failure to separate sharply the question what activities it is appropriate for government to finance from the question what activities it is appropriate for government to administer—a distinction that is important in other areas of government activity as well.”

“Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it’s only the other fellow who’s greedy.”

“I think the government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem and very often makes the problem worse.”

“The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy.”

“Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”

“I think that the Internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the role of government.”

“Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.”

“Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else’s resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property.”

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